CRCI 2025: Moondance

June 12th-14th, 2025

Due to limited capacity, CRCI 2025 is an invite-only conference, with select events open to the public.

If you are interested in attending, please get in touch with us at ariane@choreographicinterfaces.org.

Celebrating CRCI’s 10th Anniversary

The Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces (CRCI) celebrates its 10th year with an annual gathering at Brown University, June 12–14, 2025, in Providence, Rhode Island. This year’s themes explore the intersections of choreography, performance, and emerging technologies of the body in environments beyond Earth. How might live performance and arts research take shape in microgravity? Given the colonial imperatives of space exploration, how can rethinking terrestrial creative practices contribute to justice work?

CRCI 2025: Moondance marks a new phase in CRCI’s coalitional endeavors; a move to wield creative practices for more equitable futures on, and beyond, our planet.

Public-Facing Events

June 9th, 10am

Masterclass with Michael Figueroa

Michael Figueroa, a CRCI Immersive Residency artist, will lead a masterclass sharing his movement practice inspired by her research in anti-gravity environments this year.

Location: Ballet RI

June 10th, 10am

Masterclass with Laila J Franklin

Laila Franklin, a CRCI Immersive Residency artist, will lead a masterclass sharing her movement practice inspired by her research in anti-gravity environments this year.

Location: Ballet RI

June 11th, 10am

Masterclass with TBD

Location:
Lindemann Performing Arts Center

Description coming soon!

June 12th, 10am

Masterclass with Sasha Peterson

Location:
Lindemann Performing Arts Center

Sasha Peterson, a CRCI Immersive Residency artist, will lead a masterclass sharing his movement practice inspired by her research in anti-gravity environments this year.

June 12th, 7pm

COMMIT! by Kate Ladenheim

Location:
Lindemann Performing Arts Center

Photo by Mark Escribano

COMMIT! is an interactive performance in which a performer (Ladenheim) executes hundreds of dramatic falls in an hour, while the audience uses a web app to vote on whether they believe the performer has truly committed. After rounds of falling, an avatar replica of Ladenheim reads the audience's feedback aloud, while the live performer adjusts their actions in response. Throughout, motion capture and custom sensors collect data on each fall in an attempt to discover (and justify) the most "committed" fall there is.

Using gamified interactions to control a durational performance, COMMIT! explores the shifting boundaries between technological control and societal expectations. Through the performer’s repeated attempts to "commit," the piece highlights tensions between physical effort and digital representation, as well as the audience’s role in shaping and judging the performer’s actions. In this way, COMMIT! critiques societal pressures to demonstrate resilience, adaptability, and perfection. The work emphasizes the inexact and often reductive nature of data collection and digital mediation, inviting reflection on how technology distorts and constrains identity and agency.

COMMIT! is led by Kate Ladenheim, and made in collaboration with media artist Mollye Bendell and production technician Timothy Kelly

COMMIT! is commissioned by the Brown Arts Institute and The Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces (CRCI) at Brown University. 

June 13th, 11:45am

Kate Ladenheim, in conversation with Michelle Ellsworth

Location:
Lindemann Performing Arts Center

Kate Ladenheim will join acclaimed performance artist Michelle Ellsworth for a Q&A talkback following her performance of COMMIT!

Conference Panels & Performances

Due to limited capacity, the following events are invite-only. If you are interested in attending, please get in touch with us.

Rejecting the Colonial Imperatives, or, How To Punch a Space Nazi in Zero-G.

Featuring Adeene Denton, Felipe Cervera, Simone Browne, and Marie Pier Boucher. Moderated by Sydney Skybetter.

How to Put On A Show…in Outer Space.

Featuring Nahum Romero, Natasha Tsakos, Adam Dipert, and Sage Whitson. Moderated by Ariane Michaud.

The Revolution Will Not Be Orbitalized: Experiments, Alliances, and Other Mischief.

Speakers for this panel to be announced soon.

How to dance with and rapidly deactivate a robot workshopif it's surveilling you, which it probably is.

Facilitated by Jessica Rajko. Other speakers and participants to be announced soon.

This hypnosis performance by artist Nahum explores the possibilities of creating an artwork inside people’s minds, internal and immaterial. At the same time, this performance questions the meaning of home while we watch Earth from the Moon.

Voyage of Memories by Nahum Romero

Photo courtesy of Nahum Romero.

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